Everything’s a nail - appropriate research products, reflections on Knight Ch 3

Running throughout this his chapter is an obsession with impressive-looking ‘sciencey’ research products. (Tom Lehrer expresses something similar http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wX5II-BJ8hI). Personally, I have a problem with this approach to research and find it inconsistent with the underlying idea behind the advice that different types of questions need different types of methods to properly address them. Similarly, certain research projects are best addressed using different (not necessarily mathematical/quantitative AKA Sciencey) research products. Picking up on my previous post, I think there are many interesting questions relevant to understanding our social existence that cannot be adequately addressed through a data-based methods.  It may be a case of the chicken/egg, but I wonder if this obsession with sciencey-looking output is a product of funding agencies, or is inherent in the discipline, and if so how widely? Are there different epistemic communities within “social sciences” that place more or less emphasis on science data? If so, I would like to figure out where these boundaries are so I can deliberately switch sides depending on what I’m interested in at that moment.